SEOUL - The United States president-elect and the South Korean president were
clearly reading off prepared scripts when they went through a 10-minute
conversation that avoided their single-most urgent disagreement.
That is the Korea-US free-trade agreement (FTA) that Barack Obama, during his
campaign, strongly opposed as a threat to Michigan motor vehicle workers.
Obama's position puts him at direct odds with South Korea's President Lee
Myung-bak, who is pressing hard for approval of the deal by South Korea's
fractious National Assembly.
Their remarks after Obama spoke to Lee on the phone in his Blue House
presidential office were so stylized as to strip them of any
real meaning as far as the future of often frayed US-Korean relations are
concerned.
At his end of the line, Obama assured Lee that he was "a great admirer of South
Korea and its people". Lee at the other end happily went along with Obama's
call for improving the US-Korean alliance, cooperating on the six-party talks
on North Korea's nukes and working to resolve the global financial crisis.
In a society that places much emphasis on symbolic gestures, the chit-chat was
probably not a waste of time. Obama had paid respect by including Lee among the
first nine heads of state on whom he bestowed the honor of a call in response
to their congratulatory wishes [1]. Still, the Obama-Lee telephone dialogue did
not just leave the difficult issues for later; it completely ignored them.
If the conversation were to have had any substantive meaning, Obama might have
asked Lee what his trade minister, Kim Jong-hoon, was talking about when he
blamed the enormous disparity between the number of Korean cars sold in the US
and that of American cars sold in Korea on the US motor vehicle industry.
Obama might also have been curious enough to ask whether the trade minister was
totally serious or just bluffing when he said flatly, "There will be no new
negotiation" on the FTA, worked out in 16 months of harrowing talks during the
administration of Lee's predecessor, Roh Mo-hyun.
For that matter, Lee might have asked Obama what he was thinking when he seemed
to have climbed down from his strenuous opposition to the FTA, as expressed in
his campaign, and now might go along, but only if American vehicles had greater
access to the Korean market.
As of now, the gap in motor vehicle sales in each other's markets is so huge
that the odds on bringing the numbers much closer together are probably worse,
if that is possible, than the chances of North Korea abandoning its nuclear
weapons program.
After years of American complaining, US manufacturers sold 6,235 cars in South
Korea last year, compared with 777,482 cars exported to the US - and that
statistic does not include more than 200,000 Hyundai sedans and SUVs produced
at its plant in Montgomery, Alabama.
Even if Korea and the US gradually remove the tariffs as specified in the
agreement, American motor vehicle manufacturers, and labor unions, are sure
that multiple non-tariff barriers will conspire to keep American imports at the
same fairly low level. The only beneficiary, they believe, will be the Korean
motor vehicle industry, which will be able to export even more vehicles to the
US under the terms of the deal - even more than initially expected as a result
of the sunken value of the Korean won against the dollar.
American negotiators, with the full backing of President George W Bush, believe
the agreement is broad enough to bring about a significant increase in the
export of other products to Korea. The rapid expansion of trade, they are
convinced, will make the FTA "a win-win" situation, as they are fond of saying,
for both sides.
If Obama sticks to his guns, though, debate on the FTA could sour
Korean-American relations as surely as did the reluctance of Bush, in his first
term, to negotiate with North Korea. Lee sees the agreement as all the more
important as Korea's economy, including its stock market, sags in tandem with
that of other Asian economies.
Nor is the FTA the only stumbling block. Lee and Obama do not necessarily see
eye-to-eye on North Korea, despite their pledge to cooperate on the six-party
talks on North Korea's nuclear program.
The concern here is that Obama will be more likely than was Bush in his second
term to make concessions to North Korea for the sake of an appearance of
carrying out the terms of agreements reached on February 13, 2007, and October
3, 2007.
Obama's declarations of willingness to meet with North Korea's Kim Jong-il,
among other leaders hostile toward the US, raise the question as to whether he
will go along with North Korean demands for the withdrawal of US forces from
South Korea and a peace treaty that excludes South Korea. President Bill
Clinton, in the waning month or two of his presidency before Bush's
inauguration in January 2001, was tempted to go to North Korea, but held off
during the Florida "recount" of votes that gave Bush the victory over Clinton's
vice president Al Gore.
North Korea's denunciations of Lee for insisting on full "verification" of
North Korean claims to be doing away with its nuclear program heighten fears
that the North will succeed in its long-term strategy of splitting the alliance
between South Korea and the US.
Neither Lee nor Obama got into these uncomfortable issues in their
conversation. Nor did they talk about North Korea's assault on the human rights
of its own people. That topic was always avoided by Lee's two presidential
predecessors, Roh Moo-hyun and Kim Dae-jung, and has been taboo in the
six-party talks, but Lee has outraged North Korea by promising to make it an
issue.
In view of the uncertain health of Kim Jong-il, though, some analysts believe
Obama and Lee should be discussing how to respond after he leaves the scene.
North Korean reports of public appearances by Kim Jong-il, most recently at a
concert in Pyongyang by a state opera group, have not removed the view that he
suffered a stroke in August and may be partially paralyzed.
Victor Cha, former Asia director of the National Security Council staff in the
Bush administration, visiting Seoul, called for "quiet but serious discussion
about how to prepare for sudden change in North Korea".
Cha, now a professor at Georgetown University, said talk on that topic got
nowhere while Roh was president in view of fears that North Korea would see it
as part of a plot to bring about "collapse of the regime". Now, he said, "such
planning needs to be restarted in earnest and in depth".
For now, however, the economy takes precedence. Lee goes to Washington for the
Group of 20 meeting on financial problems on November 15. Obama will be there,
even as Bush savors his last big show on the world stage. Obama and Lee are
likely to meet, if briefly, on the sidelines - another chance for them to sound
each other out on the FTA.
As for North Korea's nukes, they will leave that topic up to diplomats
negotiating the next round of six-party talks. Verification of North Korea's
compliance with the nuclear deal can wait, as it has for years. Votes on the
FTA - in the US Congress and Korea's National Assembly - could happen before
Obama takes office in January.
Note
1. The other return calls were made to the leaders of Australia, Britain,
Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Japan and Mexico.
Journalist Donald Kirk has been covering Korea - and the confrontation of
forces in Northeast Asia - for more than 30 years.
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